ZIP code 72686

ZIP 72686 is a very small community in Pope County, Arkansas, with 128 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #537 of 614 ranked by population — larger than 12% of them. The median age here is 59.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in ZIP 72686 earn a median of $36,375 a year, 53.7% below the national figure of $78,538. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 32.8% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 72686 is valued at not published, while median gross rent runs not published a month. 100% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

A median age of 59.7 puts ZIP 72686 well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages. With 128 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 72686 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld home value, gross rent for ZIP 72686 because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.

ZIP 72686 is tabulated inside Pope County, Arkansas, one of 8 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 614 across Arkansas. This is one of the smallest tabulated ZIP areas in the state, the kind of rural route where a single subdivision or farm cluster accounts for most addresses. County assignment on this page follows the largest share of the ZIP's land area, which matters where a delivery route crosses a county line: mail addressed to 72686 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 72686 reports a median household income of $36,375, 39% below the $59,420 county median, and 31% below the $52,862 typical AR ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of not published. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at not published a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Arkansas charges 6.5% statewide, and local governments overlapping 72686 may add county, city or special-district levies on top. We publish the state floor for this ZIP rather than guessing a combined figure, because ZIP boundaries and taxing-district boundaries were drawn for different purposes and do not line up.

Everything above comes from the Census Bureau American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates for this ZIP Code Tabulation Area, with sales tax rates traced to the state revenue agency. Five-year estimates pool sixty months of responses, so they are stable enough to compare 72686 with its neighbours but always trail the current year, and any value the Census suppressed for sample size is shown as unpublished rather than filled in with a model.